Is your marketing negative enough?
I don’t mean attacking competitors, rather do your customers understand what life would be like without your brand? Do they see the negative of you not being around?
Growth was seen as an endless series of daily choices and decisions in each of which one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.Abraham H. Maslow1
If you’re comfortable, you’re not growing. It’s the uncomfortable things that make us grow.
The same is true of business: companies that embrace discomfort as a regular part of business life are more likely to achieve their goals and move closer and closer to fulfilling their company vision than those that don’t.
Companies that stay comfortable—which feels great in the moment—end up losing in the long run, which doesn’t feel so great.
Discomfort is a prerequisite for change.
You’re a better designer if you love the people you’re designing for.
Fred Dust, IDEO Partner, quoted in Bernadette Jiwa’s Meaningful
I’m surprised how many companies don’t love their customers.
They talk about being customer-centric or even customer-obsessed, but they don’t love the customer they have. Instead, they fall in love with the customer they want.
Their customers aren’t cool enough. They aren’t young enough. They’re too weird.
I’ve heard these comments in the back of interview rooms. I’ve seen the look of disappointment in people’s faces when we’ve delivered presentations, looks that clearly said: “That shouldn’t be my customer; my customer should be….”
These companies are all driven by a faulty line of thinking: focusing on what the people are like instead of what the people need—what tensions in their lives need to be solved.
Great brands solve needs; that’s how they attract customers.
A brand that doesn’t solve a need—a tension in customers’ lives—is a weak brand.
Instead of trying to understand their customers and figure out their tensions, these companies focus on trying to attract the types of customers they want. They attempt to create surface-level appeal instead of the type of appeal that drives customer decision-making: appealing to higher human needs.
I think this is one of the reasons you see companies constantly changing their advertising or trying to reinvent themselves: desperate attempts to attract the types of people they want to love them.
No one falls in love with a desperate person. No customer will love a desperate company.
Love the customer you have, not the one you want. Make it about them. Solve their tensions. That’s the only way they’ll love you back.
Today the campfire is called a computer or a television … Drama goes back to the beginning of civilization around the campfire, where the tribe comes together, and they say, “My God, did you see what blah blah did with that mountain lion today?” And the other guy says, “I’ll tell you one better than that.” … [W}e tell stories that unite the tribe. We reinforce our tribal unity. We say, this is how we do things here.
David Mamet, MasterClass.com
If the computer is the new campfire, social media is the biggest campfire ever built.
Most companies invest a lot of money in social media because they know they have to. But, few know what to do with it.
Most commercial messages contain too many elements, all competing with one another for our understanding, and the elements themselves may be uninteresting, unclear, or off-message.
Marty Neumeier, Zag
Companies try to make their brands stand out and be different: they try to constantly be new to gain a competitive advantage. In short, they use newness as a path to relevance. But, this quest to be relevant has affected their ability to be meaningful.
Magic has long held a special place in the nation’s history. American magicians perform in arenas, theaters, and even backyards. No matter how big or small, a magic show will always inspire wonder.
Today as a member of the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee, I am honored that the United States Postal Service delivered these Forever stamps.
This reminds me, let’s learn some magic for your brand…
Brands are a unique combination of a set of ideas and inanimate objects that serve as an ideal platform for relationships. When people feel bound to a group or community of shared beliefs around a brand where at least part of their identity is tied to the group, it’s a phenomenon known as participation mystique.
These brands spark magical participation with their customers; they embrace a particular way of being, aligned to a specific set of beliefs.
When brands attract customers to come together something magical happens, now let’s make that happen for you and your team.
Creating Magic: A mini workshop
To help you think more magical thoughts try these juxtapositions:
If my company was Zappos how would we WOW our customers?
If our company was Disney how would we give our customers a magical day?
If our brand was Houdini what problems can I help my customers escape?
By thinking like other great magical brands, you will discover magic of your own.
Now what do you want out of me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters? Or do you want to see the goddamned sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?
Rosser Reeves in Dennis Higgins’ The Art of Writing Advertising
Marketers are quick to blame agencies for their ineffectiveness. And it’s true: I’ve lost count of the times I’ve seen agencies produce off-brand advertising that didn’t resonate with their customers; but hell, it looks pretty and gets likes. I’ve even seen a major agency try to get a company to fund research for an ad slogan that was not only off-brand but was impossible to understand—on the bright side, it was the first time they actually tried to gather data to inform an ad.
But, the fault isn’t solely with the agencies, it’s also with the companies hiring them. Many companies don’t know what they want to get out of a marketing initiative, so they don’t articulate it to the agency, and then the agency produces whatever the agency wants instead of what the company needs.
Every initiative, whether it’s a television ad campaign or the way you handle your Facebook page, should have a goal. And, the goal doesn’t have to be monetary. What is has to be is something that ties into your vision—what you want your brand to become.
Using the vision as a guide, you can create strategies—the overarching plans to get you to your vision—that result in a series of tactics—the steps it’ll take to get you there.
Marketing initiatives fall under the tactics bubble and must be measured in that context. Think: What do I want this initiative to do in a way that fits a strategy that pushes the company towards its ultimate vision.?
Thinking in this way makes it easy to then develop a simple metric to test the effectiveness of the initiative and be able to hold an agency accountable for the results.
Acting this way will ensure your marketing initiatives are on brand; make agencies produce better, more meaningful work; and, it will stop you from being so frustrated with your lack of return on your marketing spend.
“Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.”
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework
A brand isn’t a name or a logo: it’s the perception people have of your organization. Everything your company and employees do contribute to this perception: how an associate greets a customer at checkout; how your television ads looks and feel and what they say; how you respond on social media; and even what the mailroom clerk tells their friends about what it’s like to work at your company.
Everyone in the company can influence perception, so they can influence the brand. In other words, everyone in the company plays some role in your company’s marketing.
To make everyone an effective marketer, everyone must be on the same page. This is why it’s so important to understand your Brand DNA (the human core of your brand and the problems you solve) and and then translate it into both a vision (what you want the company to become) and a set of core values (what the company stands for) that are understandable by every person in your organization.
With an easily-understood vision and a set of core values that are rooted in human needs, every person in your company can be motivated by your ultimate goal and understand what behaviors contribute toward and what behaviors work against what you are trying to achieve.
In Alexander the Great’s conquest of Persia, the Macedonian King upset his military compatriots and childhood friends by marrying Roxana.
Roxana was the daughter of a minor Persian baron. That is, she was not from Macedonia; she was not of Greek blood.
This outraged Alexander’s men who felt that he was disrespecting his homeland. But Alexander didn’t identify himself exclusively as Macedonian or Greek. This great military strategist had a grand vision to create an empire that united the world as one people.
Alexander understood one of the Seven Rules of Cult Brands: Be open and inclusive.
The ideals of Vans shoes, for example, probably aren’t going to speak to you if you’re not in the skateboard community. IKEA isn’t going to draw your attention if you aren’t in the market for affordable furniture that gives your home a sense of style.
The annual, week-long, Burning Man event now attracts over 65,000 attendees to the Black Rock Desert each August. Anyone can participate. As written in their ten guiding principles, “Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.”
And the full range of attendees from artists to billionaires, to Silicon Valley CEOs, demonstrate that the not-for-profit is true to its word.
How To Be Inclusive
The more inclusive you are, the more customer groups you open your business to and the larger your market potential becomes.
To become a more inclusive brand requires diligence. Being inclusive means gaining insights into new customer groups and then collaborating with your teams to discover ways of relating these new customers to your business, and serving them with respect.
How inclusive is your business today?
How inclusive do you want your business to be tomorrow?
THE BIG IDEA: Certain businesses excel at fostering undying, cult-like following among their customers. Our study of Cult Brands reveals seven rules any business can follow to attract loyal customers.
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Some customers have a religious devotion to a particular brand. They may go so far as to permanently scorch their skin with the logo or image of the brand they love.
While this may appear extreme to you, fifteen years of research into Cult Brands has shown us that the psychological reasons behind cult followings illuminate the drivers behind customer loyalty in any business.
So even if you don’t aspire to have customers tattoo your logo onto their heads, if you’re interested in creating loyal, profitable customers, there’s a lot to learn from Cult Brands.
Cult Brands create emotional experiences that lead to feelings of belonging, a sense of shared consciousness with a group of people. The customers of Cult Brands often feel like part of a family instead of consumers of a business. This is a powerful, emotional connection.
Apple, Harley, IKEA, Star Trek, Zappos, MINI, and The Motley Fool all invite their customers into their clan.
So how do they do it?
7 Rules for Cultivating Customer Loyalty
We’ve identified seven core rules that all Cult Brands tend to share. These rules are the fundamental tenets that all Cult Brands consciously or instinctively follow as they do business.
Keeping these rules in mind makes it easier to decide how to grow your business and foster loyalty.
The Seven Rules of Cult Brands provide a framework for ongoing business success. As you read through each rule, think about ways you can apply it to your organization.
Rule #1: Differentiate
Cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead summed up the challenge facing today’s marketers: “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
Your customers are driven by two simultaneous desires that appear to be diametrically opposed to each other. They want to stand out from the crowd and be a unique individual while simultaneously wanting (and needing) to be part of the crowd, receiving the social support and approval of like-minded individuals.
How do people meet these opposing needs? By belonging to a group they identify as being unique, often outside of mainstream society.
If you’ve got a home, you need furniture. The community of people who need furniture is considerable. But the community of people who need furniture with minimalist charm and serious organizational capacity (and enjoy quirky Swedish names) is smaller and distinct—just different enough to make IKEA irresistible to legions of their fans.
Your customers want to be part of a group that’s different. It’s that simple.
Rule #2: Be Courageous
Even in the face of doubters and critics, Cult Brands dare to be different—and succeed. Cult Brands are successful because they are wholly unlike every other company in the marketplace.
Cult Brands believe in themselves, their products and services, and their customers. They want to challenge conventional wisdom and transform it when given the chance. Willing to take significant risks, the people behind Cult Brands are fighters and leaders, not quitters or followers.
When Whole Foods started in 1980, there were less than six natural foods supermarkets in the United States. Today, the natural and organic foods market is estimated at more than $28.6 billion.
Cult Brands, however, don’t waste their time or energy worrying about who is following them. Their attention is focused on how to better serve their customers.
Rule #3: Promote a Lifestyle
Cult Brands sell more than a product or a service. Customers want more than just things; they are seeking experiences.
Experiential purchases are more meaningful than material purchases. As such, all Cult Brands sell lifestyles. They develop and sell “the tools” that help their customers pursue their dreams and celebrate distinct lifestyles.
Cult Brands remove barriers for their customers. The would-be musician no longer needs to shell out thousands of dollars for expensive instruments and equipment. They just need to download the right apps onto their iPad, and they’re ready to rock.
Apple promotes a creative lifestyle that facilitates self-expression. Jimmy Buffett celebrates life as a party. The Life is good Company promotes a laid-back weekend BBQ with friends.
Your customers have aspirations. Those aspirations are powered by emotions. If you can support your customers in the realization of their aspirations, they will associate their positive emotions with your business.
Rule #4: Listen to Your Customers
Cult Brands focus on serving the wants and needs of the customers they have. They have the ability to listen to their customers’ discontent and create solutions that build strong, enduring loyalty.
By listening, Amazon.com discovered that the high cost of shipping interfered with how often their customers made purchases. In response, they launched Amazon Prime in 2005, a program in which members enjoy unlimited free two-day shipping in exchange for a yearly fee.
It’s an initiative that has been more successful than anyone could have ever imagined. Over 20 million people are Amazon Prime members. The typical Amazon Prime member buys as much as 150 percent more than non-Prime members. It’s a powerful example of the results of listening.
Respect your choir. Listen to them. Value their opinions. Reward them. Never ignore an enthusiastic follower of your business. Remember that all core followers want to believe, but first, they need to see miracles in the form of unexpected gifts and surprises.
Do extraordinary things for your choir and they’ll become incredible brand evangelists.
Rule #5: Support Customer Communities
Cult Brands know how to build strong, ongoing relationships with their customers by developing and supporting customer communities.
Cult Brands aren’t afraid to use today’s profits to support customer communities to generate powerful, long-term goodwill for their businesses and their brands.
When possible, they establish social events that reflect their missions. MINI created their annual Take the State tour. Life Is Beautiful puts on their popular Music Festival each year. Harley supports HOG Rallies worldwide. (We attended their 105th Anniversary event in Milwaukee and recorded the magic.)
Rule #6: Be Open, Inviting and Inclusive
You don’t have to earn your way into a Cult Brand by proving you’re cool enough. Cult Brands take it as a given that you’re already cool enough.
Cult Brands welcome customers of all ages, races, creeds, and socioeconomic backgrounds with open arms. They don’t discriminate against anyone who doesn’t fit into an idealized customer profile. Everyone is welcome.
Cult Brands prove to their customers that they are indeed open and inclusive by helping to fulfill the deep human needs that we all share, including belonging and self-esteem.
Rule #7: Promote Personal Freedom
Deep inside every human being on this planet is a need for freedom.
According to Abraham Maslow, the feeling of freedom is a bridge to self-actualization: we want to be able to grow and express our own unique identity and worldview without fear of consequences.
Harley promotes freedom on the open road. Vans promotes freedom from convention. Linux promotes freedom of information. Apple promotes creativity and self-expression.
Cult Brands are empowering and expansive. When customers engage with a Cult Brand, they come away feeling like they can do more, and do it more effectively.
Tapping into the Forces Behind Customer Loyalty
Integrating the Seven Rules of Cult Brands into your operations expands the number of ways you can tap into the forces of customer loyalty.
Consistent application of these principles will strengthen the bond you have with your existing all-star customers, while simultaneously creating new customers.
As your customers deepen their emotional connection with you, their loyalty will grow. Your organization will become stronger, more resilient, and more differentiated.
Oh, you’ll probably become more profitable too.